One of the things that fascinates me these days is how people react to content they see online. And there’s a theory that explains why for-you feeds have turned us all into entitled pricks who expect the entire internet to be created for us and our needs.
Do you know the bean soup theory? If you think recipes can’t create internet drama, well, you’re wrong.
Back in 2023, a creator posted a recipe for a bean soup. Almost instantly, her comment section got flooded by comments saying things like “I can’t have beans because I suffer from [illness]”, “Beans make me gassy”, “Can I replace beans with something else?”
Well, no, it’s a bean soup.
This raised an interesting problem that affects us all, no matter what we sell and what we post content about: people have forgotten to take what they need and leave what they don’t.
The original creator made an excellent point: you tested dozens of my recipes and loved them. Why can’t you scroll past something you don’t like and be done with it? Why do you have to imply that I screwed up by posting something that doesn’t work for you, one person out of my hundreds of thousands of followers?
Honestly, it’s something I struggle with too. Yes, I know the “you can’t be for everyone” adage and I don’t try.
And yet, there’s something inside that pushes me to figure out angles that most people will find useful.
I’ll tell you why, how I’m dealing (or struggling to deal with) this issue in a second.
But first, a message from today’s partner, a newsletter I devour, but also one that’s exactly like bean soup: you love it or hate it. (Hey, at least it won’t make you gassy.)
My friend Bryan Yates writes the newsletter that reads your mind. I don’t know how he does it but every issue has at least one insight that I needed to read. And I’m not the only one — I’ve spoken to other subscribers who feel the same.
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Do you remember when we used to read newspapers and magazines — the printed kind? Yes, I’m showing my age.
I don’t know about you but personally, I never read the whole thing. I always left out the sports section, while other people bought the same newspaper for that section only.
Yet, I never thought, “why the fuck did they add a section I don’t care about?” I understood why.
In the meantime, “for you” algorithms trained us to resist anything that doesn’t align with our immediate goals or preferences. All it takes is a single swipe to get to another piece of content that does tickle our current fancy.
This is the new-ish interest graph or the “for-you” feed in action. The one that doesn’t require you to have any patience or even brush against topics that aren’t of immediate interest.
Of course, this programming goes beyond social media. When I wrote about LinkedIn in this newsletter, people told me they hated it.
When I wrote about Reddit, people replied to tell me it’s full of weirdos, so they didn’t want to use it.
Unlike on social media, my people weren’t demanding I write something that matters to them right the F now. They just wanted to chat about a platform or a tactic. I can’t tell you how grateful I am for having these kinds of people around.
Still, I worry. I know this is only the beginning of how this “for-you” programming will affect us all. You can already see how hard it is to break into a new bubble if you’re starting from scratch.
So what can we do?
Is niching down a solution?
On paper, it looks great → if you only write about one problem/once channel/one outcome, people will keep caring, right?
Potentially, but that would limit you greatly. Even if you chose to, say, only write about LinkedIn, people would eventually stumble upon something they don’t care about.
Perhaps they’re knee-deep into figuring out their outreach strategy, and you’re dropping an email about profile optimization.
It’s somewhat related but not enough. Just like “yeah, I like soup but not bean soup”.
This is why I’m usually against niching down. It fixes your problem momentarily, but it also makes your audience outgrow you pretty fast.
Audience tuning isn’t the solution either
I wrote about audience tuning and its perils at length here. TL;DR: if you tune your message so your audience only hears what they want to hear, you will sound like everyone else fairly quickly.
Bean soup is for bean lovers → how to fix this dilemma
We all complain about low social media reach and engagement. Yet, we forget one crucial thing: when people react to your content, most of the time they’re reacting as people, not as customers.
And those two signals are wildly different.
A customer reacts like this:
- “I tried this and got stuck at step two.”
- “This part helped but I’m struggling with the implementation.”
- “Can you explain X more?”
That’s useful because it’s market feedback. But most reactions you see online sound more like this:
- “I don’t like LinkedIn.”
- “I would never use Reddit.”
- “I don’t do newsletters.”
- “I can’t eat beans.”
Cool.
But none of that is strategy feedback. It’s just personal preference.
And if you adjust your strategy every time someone expresses a preference, you’ll slowly end up building a business for people who were never going to buy from you in the first place.
This is the bean soup problem in a nutshell: you make something for a specific group of people.
Then someone walks in, announces they hate beans, and somehow you start wondering whether the soup was a mistake.
Caveat: if your business is a purely media business (as in, you are an influencer or a content creator), you shouldthink about whether bean soup was a mistake or not. If not, “let that shit go”, as my friend Bryan says.
I see this constantly with creators and solopreneurs — and myself too.
Three people don’t show up to a program and the immediate thought is: Did I screw up?
Personal example time: when I launched the Newsletter Growth Bootcamp, there were three people in my audience who I knew were a great fit for it. I was almost certain they would join.
But, when I first spoke about it, all three emailed me to tell me why they won’t join – all with very good reasons:
- One person was in a retreat with no internet access for half the duration of the bootcamp
- Another person was digital nomad-ing in a country with a completely incompatible timezone.
- The third person had just joined another program, on a completely different topic, and they couldn’t do both at the same time.
So yeah, sometimes the answer is yes — we screw up. But very often, the answer is much simpler: they just didn’t want bean soup that day, even if they are a bean soup lover.
Candidly, this perfect storm made me wonder about screwing up the timing too. It’s uncanny, right?
Then again, I realized I couldn’t have possibly figured out who among my audience has an open calendar for a full month — without playing favorites. So I let that shit go — it’s not something I could control.
One of the hardest things to do in business is exactly this: separating useful feedback from noise.
When you’re building a business, clarity is oxygen. And sometimes the clearest move you can make is simply this:
- Make the soup.
- Serve it to the people who like beans and want them NOW.
- Let everyone else keep scrolling.
Balance does not mean being tone deaf, though
There are some instances when you can’t just roll with your bean soup. For instance, if you talk to an audience who has IBS, a bean soup recipe would be the worst possible idea.
So what do you do when you’re not sure whether a piece of content has potential or a product has a chance of gaining traction?
You focus on your core audience, on the inner circle — every business has one.
For me, the smallest core of that audience is the Council members. If I want to build something new, they are the first people I ask whether they need it or not.
The next person I ask is you, who reads this newsletter. If something is relevant to you, I build it/write about it.
Everything else is noise for me, so I ignore it.
For you, there will be different layers, of course. If you’re uncertain about what will land and what won’t, you can start here — how to validate demand before you launch. There’s a free custom GPT in there to help you start making that decision.
However, no AI solution will ever replace talking to your core audience, so do that too before you launch.
The Council Bulletin
We just wrapped up the Newsletter Growth Bootcamp and I’m SO DAMN PROUD of the transformations that happened during the bootcamp month. People didn’t just revamp their newsletters but also reconsidered their positioning, their messaging, and more.
Check out some of the feedback below.
The next thing on my agenda for The Council is to figure out the topic for our next sprint/bootcamp.
In the meantime, we carry on with our usual schedule: regular calls, async support, and member- or guest-led workshops.
Need a container for implementation that comes with my full support + peer support for a full year? Join us here!
